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they were from the sixties. An old spitfire of a woman was holding court while she cut a round, friendly looking woman’s silver hair.
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Hey, yourself,” the stylist sounded like she smoked twenty-four packs of cigarettes a day. “What brings you in today?”
    “I was hoping to get a pedicure.”
    “We haven’t done them since Doni passed away, and that was what? Twenty years ago. I’m Nell, what’s your name, cutie?”
    “Rainey Brown,” I said. “Wow, you’ve been at this for a while.”
    “Since 1957.” She looked me over, especially my hair. “You a beautician?”
    “Yes, ma’am. Just passing through. So you’ve been fixing hair for more than fifty years? How do you do it?”
    She laughed, reminding me that folks from Montana are never fixing to do anything, reminding me of Beck. “Fifty-five years, honey, and I’ve got the bad back, and bad feet to prove it. And don’t even get me started on my knees. But I can’t quit, my people need me.”
    “We won’t let her,” the silver head chirped.
    “Besides, I know if I quit, I’d be dead in a week. This place keeps me going, my people keep me going, although so many of them have passed on. I still have a handful. I’ll keep at it as long as they keep coming.”
    “It’s the only place in town who’ll do an upsweep for eight dollars,” the woman in the chair added. It’s probably the only place in town that still does an upsweep.
    Nell put her lady under the dryer and plopped down in the chair in front of her station with a big sigh. “Gets harder and harder every day, standing on my feet. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m almost glad to have less of my people.”
    I smiled, loving that she didn’t think of her patrons as clients, they were people, her people. “If you don’t mind me asking, how do you keep your doors open charging those prices?” I nodded at the yellowed poster board.
    “This place was paid for ten years after I opened. Insurance money from when my husband passed on. I just make enough to keep the power turned on. I’m not ready for my light to go out.” She smiled and fluffed up the front of her big do that was stiff as a board and as perfect as if it had come out of a plastic mold. Except for a little spot in the back.
    “Do you cut your own hair?” I asked.
    She blushed like a young girl. “Ah, hell. Does it show?”
    I laughed. “Just this one little spot. May I?”
    “Lord, Rainey, I haven’t had someone else’s hands in my hair since Earline passed,” she nodded toward the only other stylist’s station. It seemed to be a shrine with little knickknacks and pictures of the two women over the years. And let me tell you, Nell had been a looker. “That was fifteen years ago, but it’s getting harder and harder to hold that mirror and cut the back just right. My husband used to say, it’s the beautician’s equivalent of Annie Oakley using a hand mirror to sharp shoot behind her back.”
    “I’d be honored to fix it—I mean cut it.”
    After the sliver head left, Nell let me wash her hair. It had almost been a week since I’d had my hands in someone else’s hair, and it felt like home.
    “I can’t believe I’ve been walking around all this time with my hair gapped up.”
    “It wasn’t that bad, Nell. Really.”
    “It’s bad advertising, that’s what it is.” I shaped up the back of her hair while she told me about how the town had changed over the years. Some of the things she liked, better roads and services from the city, some things she didn’t.
    “Earline and I went to Florida once. Saw a bumper sticker I liked so much, I’ve still got it on my car. Says, if it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?”
    I laughed along with her, even though I was sort of a tourist.
    Calling on every ounce of technical and artistic talent, I tried to fix Nell’s hair as big as she’d had it before, but my skills in that area were sorely lacking. Nell said it was fine, but I